I wonder how easy it is to incorporate this in a game model. In the truck model looks like each piece of the car is modeled individually and might be a lot harder for the artists to make models. And wonder how are materials calculated, some things in the model bend in different ways.
If I had to design the modeller/composer for this kind of thing, I would probably make some kind of "paintable" deformation weights. I could be totally wrong, but I don't think there's any way they could calculate tensile strength based on the model's geometry in (playable) real time. So they might have to manually set how weak/strong groups of vertices are...and tie those vertices to some soft body joints. I imagine if they only do the physics on those joints (movement, bending, crunching), it could be pretty cheap?
Example of how joints apply weights to vertices in things like humanoid appendages: http://i.imgur.com/QiDDu.jpg
If any of you brilliant Crytek guys are reading this, could you comment on the setup? :) I'm an amateur 3d engine guy, and I love this stuff.
My gut tells me they manually place soft body joints and then paint the weights for the models. It seems like that would be easier to maintain and more predictable for the deformations that they expect to see.
For example, you and I know how the front of a truck "should" look if half of it gets crunched in, but that deformation is because of an engine, the body, lots of metal/plastic components, etc. Obviously it's not yet realistic to model every single component of a truck, and perform a physical simulation "baking" step, so that the truck crunches in that way in the game. They have to fudge that kind of crunch...so it makes me think they're manually rigging the softbodies.